understood my intentions, I think, and none of it will matter anymore.”
Lamech opened his eyes. How different they were from those Unwin saw the previous morning. They were watery and blue, and very much alive. But they were blind to his presence.
Lamech rose from his seat, and a hat appeared in his hand. When he put it on, a matching raincoat fell over his shoulders. “I don’t know whether I’ve been able to explain very much to you,” he said. “But since you’re seeing this, then you’ve likely received my instructions and taken this file to the third archive. So you may understand a great deal. Time moves differently here, and that can be confusing to the uninitiated, but it will work to our advantage. I will tell you what more you need to know while we walk together. I have a few errands to run before I go to my appointment.”
He walked toward the door, and Unwin jumped aside to avoid him.
“In case you’re wondering,” Lamech went on, “I almost always begin with my office. We watchers work best when we stick to certain patterns. Some prefer a childhood home for their starting point, others a wooded place. One woman uses a subway station with countless intersecting tracks. My office is familiar to me, and I can reconstruct it with relative ease. These are only details, though, meaningless unto themselves. If you are seated, I suggest you stand at this time.”
Lamech opened the door. Instead of the hallway of the thirty-sixth floor, with its yellow light fixtures and bronze nameplates, Unwin saw a twisting alleyway, dark and full of rain. They stepped outside, and the door closed behind them. Unwin wished for his hat and found that he was wearing it. He wished for his umbrella, and that, too, was with him, in his hand and open. But as they walked the maze of high brick walls, he remained partly aware of the warmth of the blankets on the bed and of the softness of his pillow.
“All this is representational,” Lamech said. “And arbitrary, for that matter. But it takes years of practice to achieve this degree of lucidity. Think of the alley as an organizational schematic. It’s one I find especially useful. Here are as many doors as I need, and they serve logically as connecting principles. Some watchers work more quickly than I do, because they don’t bother with such devices. But they have forgotten how to take pleasure in their vocation. There is something good about it, don’t you think? The night, and the splash of the rain around us? We move unseen through the dark, along back ways and side streets. Forgive me if I indulge in the particulars, Mr. Unwin. A lot has happened very quickly, and I’m working this out as we go.”
The moon emerged from behind the clouds, and Lamech gazed up at it, grinning a little. Then it was gone again, and he drew his coat more tightly about his body. “Miss Palsgrave’s machine in the third archive is a wonder—we tell her when we’re close to something important, something we may need to document, and she’ll tune it to the correct frequency. She can even check in on you herself and follow you from one mind to another if necessary. The truth is, it’s one of the few advantages we have over Hoffmann: the ability to record, review, correlate, compare. We don’t always know what he’s up to, but we can spot Hoffmannic patterns in the recordings of the city’s dreams, then act to thwart his next move.
“This recording,” he added, “may turn out to be especially valuable, and more than a little dangerous—to you as well as to me, I’m afraid.”
In the shadow of a junk pile, they came to a shabby door, blue paint peeling from its worn wooden surface. Lamech leaned close to it and listened. “Here we are,” he said.
He opened the door, and bright light shone into the alleyway, gilding the wet bricks. Over Lamech’s shoulder Unwin saw the impossible: a broad beach, the sea deep and boundless, and the sun, high and bright at the top of the sky. He followed Lamech out onto the sand. On this side, the door served as the entrance to a rickety beach house.
The heat was terrible. Unwin removed his hat and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He kept his umbrella over his head, shielding himself from the sun as they trudged toward the water.
Near the edge